“#Undi18 is a movement I started together with a friend, with the objective of lowering the voting age to 18.
I’ve been a registered voter since 2017 and voted for the first time last year at GE14 (14th General Election). Had I been eligible to vote when I turned 18, I could have gone to GE13. It felt weird to not being able to vote at 18, an age where I am already considered as an adult.
During my time studying abroad, everyone at uni was talking about Donald Trump and Brexit. It was an exciting moment for us Malaysian students there, although we did notice a large number of Malaysian youths were not active in political discourse. Our country’s voting age, combined with our Universities and University Colleges Act (UUCA) did not make it easy for them to participate and speak out. So, we started NAMSA (National Assembly of Malaysian Students in America) to encourage more dialogues among students.
While a lot of countries had already set the voting age to 18, Malaysia was still one of the very few countries with a higher voting age at 21. To get the voting age reduced to 18, we first approached our student coalition network to garner their support because we realised it couldn’t be a syok sendiri petition. The students we worked with are elected representatives whose student bodies are recognised by the government.
Unfortunately, the petition was not well-received by the previous ruling party. We spoke to many BN youth leaders, but they turned us away. It was also rejected as a Transformasi 50 (TN50) motion.
It was much easier to gain support from Pakatan Harapan, who was the former opposition party at that time because they had many young idealistic leaders who believed in our cause. Our petition for reducing voting age thus became part of their manifesto.
Things really took a turn when the Undi18 Bill was tabled in Parliament. I attended the session with 50 other students as I felt it was really important to have all of us involved. It was so surreal to see it being passed unanimously! It really made us feel that Malaysian youths have a say in the country.
This year, #Undi18 has been more aggressive with public engagement. Social media plays a huge role in spreading the word out and it definitely makes our work a lot easier. We hosted so many Facebook live sessions to engage the public. We have also been conducting workshops in schools on political awareness and education. Recently, we collaborated with Sekolah Rukun Negara to increase our reach and the reactions we’ve received from students had been interesting.
We hope to work with more organisations that are interested in cultivating political awareness among youths and make a greater impact in the next elections. We’re still working hard to improve the structure of Undi 18 as we plan to expand ourselves.
Everyone has a role to play so no one gets left behind.”
Photostory by Yasmin Mortaza
Edited by Sydrah M
